God’s blessed the church with hundreds of memorable hymns of the faith. Christians and non-Christians alike recognise lines such as “Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound…”, “How Great Thou Art”, “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, and “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide…” (I’m sure you can think of many of your own examples).

For a bit of a laugh, here are a couple of examples of old hymn lyrics that, although theologically sound, have thankfully fallen out of use:

Stanza 6 in “How Firm A Foundation”:

Even down to old age all My people shall prove
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.

(Hoary means ancient, aged.)

Stanza 9 of Charles Wesley’s “Come Thou O Traveller Unknown”:

’Tis Love! ’tis Love! Thou diedst for me!
I hear Thy whisper in my heart;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, universal love Thou art;
To me, to all, Thy bowels move;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

The term “bowels” used to mean the seat of one’s emotion (what we refer today as our heart).

The first line of Isaac Watt’s “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” was originally:

“Hark! How all the welkin rings, ‘Glory to the King of Kings.”

(Welkin refers to the highest heavens.)

And from verse 3 of Joseph Hart’s hymn, “Salvation to the Lamb”:

When we incurred the wrath of God, Alas! what could we worse?
He came, and with his own heart’s blood Redeem’d us from the curse.
This paschal Lamb, our heav’nly meat, was roasted in the flame.
Repeat, ye ransomed souls, repeat, “Salvation to the Lamb!”

While I like Joseph Hart’s sincere attempt to link Jesus to the Passover lamb in Exodus, this particular imagery is um… hard to stomach (thankfully other people have tried rewriting it).

To fit the language

So why did these hymnwriters use those words? To fit the language of the people at that time, who would have understood the phrases and meanings without any hint of snickering.

Brian Wren in his book Praying Twice adds some helpful insight (p.297-8):

“… The need for change sometimes overrides the need for familiarity… In the Preface to his Hymns and Spiritual Songs, [Isaac Watts] says that “what is provided for public worship should give to sincere consciences as little vexation and disturbance as possible” However, “where any unpleasing word is found, he that leads the worship may substitute a better; for (Blessed be God) we are not confined to the words of any Man in our public solemnities.”

“However much we value our past, our present interest in congregational song is not antiquarian, but immediate. We sing to God from today, in lyrics which — whether ancient or recent — express today’s faith. When a lyric from the past gets too archaic to be understood, or too out of sync with today’s hope, faith, and issues to speak for us, it will eventually cease to be sung, or amended to keep it singable.“

I was reflecting awhile back on whether Christians had to hang on to obscure hymn lyrics. Ultimately, I think Brian Wren is right – if a line is worth understanding and remembering, it will stay in use. And if it makes you think about your bowels, it’s probably not worth keeping!

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Further reading:

Bobby Gilles – How to revise hymn lyrics without destroying the hymn

I like this definition of a hymn:

Hymnologist Erik Routley once defined hymns as “songs for unmusical people to sing together . . . [and] such poetry as unliterary people can utter together.” At first, this might seem to exult in the lack of artistry. But Routley was actually writing to appreciate the remarkable skill of poets and musicians who accept the challenge to be both profound and accessible at the same time, which is a lot more difficult than simply being one or the other. While there is a kind of beauty in a carefully-honed studio recording, there is another kind of beauty -– an often remarkable and haunting beauty -– in the sound of a congregation of mostly unmusical people singing together.”

- John Witvliet, For the Beauty of the Church

Some words to pause amid life’s fleeting pursuits,and reflect beyond the grave.

Sometimes amid the hurry, toil and strife,
The claims, the urgencies, the whirl of life;
The soul, perhaps in silence of the night —
Has flashes — transient intervals of light.

When things to come, without a shade of doubt.
In terrible reality stand out;
These lucid moments suddenly present
A glance of truth, as tho’ the heavens were rent;

And thro’ the chasm of pure celestial light,
The future breaks upon the startled sight:
Life’s vain pursuits, and Time’s advancing pace,
Appear with death-bed clearness face to face;

And immortality’s expanse sublime,
In just proportion to the speck of time:
While Death, uprising from the silent shades,
Shows his dark outline ere the vision fades;
In strong relief against the blazing sky,
Appears the shadow as it passes by;

And though o’erwhelming to the dazzled brain,
These are the moments when the mind is sane:
For then a hope of heaven, a Saviour’s Cross,
Seem what they are, and all things else but loss.

Oh! to be ready — ready for that day.
Would we not give earth’s fairest toys away?
Alas! how soon its interests cloud the view.
Rush in, and plunge us in the world anew.

- Jane Taylor, The Invalid’s Hymn Book (ed. Harriet Kierman, 1854), xxxvi.

We first came across the song while looking for tutorials on how to back wrap our baby. As you can see in the video, we managed to work out how to do it!

Can’t say the lyrics to this Dent May song are that meaningful, but it is a very catchy ukulele riff…

The lyrics:

Before you close your eyes to sleep
I have a promise still to keep
As I hold you in my arms
I pray your little frame grows strong
And that faith takes hops while you are young
This is my prayer for you

Hold my hand, I’ll teach you the way to go
Through the joys, through the years
The journey of these years
May you trust Him till the end
May you trust Him in the end

This world is not as it should be
But the Saviour opens eyes to see
All that’s beautiful and true
Oh may His light fill all you are
And the jewel of wisdom crowns your heart
This is my prayer for you

Hold my hand, I’ll teach you the way to go
Through the joys, through the tears
The journey of these years
He is with is till the end
He is faithful till the end

You’ll travel where my arms won’t reach
As the road will rise and lead your feet
On a journey of your own
May my mistakes to hinder you
But His grace remain and guide you through
This is my prayer for you

Take His hand and go where He calls you to
And whatever comes, seek Him
With all your heart
This will be my prayer for you

Father hear my ceaseless prayer
Oh keep her in your care

Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty, and Fionan de Barra; © 2012 Gettymusic and Fionan de Barra (adm. by MusicServices.org)

The song is from their latest album, Hymns for the Christian Life.

Andrew Peterson’s “You Came So Close” has lyrics describing someone’s marriage breaking apart through adultery, but then somehow holding together. Some of the lyrics:

You could no more kill the darkness
Than you could raise the sun
And the sky was cold and black
Like the barrel of a gun

And I remember the tremble
In the words you spoke
As you balanced there on the brink
At the end of your rope

You came so close to letting go

And you knew she would hate you
She would kick you out
You’d been lying in the bed that you made
When you broke your vow

Then you woke in the wasteland
Of the truth you told
And you turned to see she stayed,
She was bright as a band of gold

You came so close to letting go

In an old interview, he describes the story of difficult grace behind the song:

The verses came out of hard conversations with friends of mine who were going through dark nights of the souls – suicidal thoughts and another guy whose marriage was falling apart. He had been cheating on his wife and spiritually speaking was as dead as he could be. He decided that whenever his wife found out that he would have his bags packed. She confronted him; of course it was ugly. He stood there waiting for her to kick him out and she didn’t. In this moment of incredible grace, she said, “I don’t want you to leave. I want to figure this out. You’re my husband. I love you.” That was so jarring to him, because he couldn’t fathom that she would ever want him to stay. It woke him up. Whatever it was that was in him that wanted to quit, it gave him a ray of hope that maybe he was loveable. Lo and behold, they’re still married. That story renewed my faith that there’s never reason to give up hope. The Lord can do anything. How many times has He proven this ability to take all of this darkness and to turn it inside out and turn it into this bright light.

I was watching the commentary on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and one of the commenters said that despair is not just a sin theologically speaking. Despair is also just a mistake. Despair assumes you know the end of the story, that you can see something that you can’t. My friends in that moment could not forsee a good ending to their stories, but there was still cause for hope. We don’t know how the story will end.

What an example of Christ-like commitment to his church, even in the midst of terrible sin and sorrow.

The song is on Andrew Peterson’s “Counting Stars” album. Worth every dollar.

Yet as I cradled our 1 year old daughter this morning after breakfast, she became unexpectedly still. She stared up, occasionally lifting her doll-like finger up to gently trace my lips, as God etched the moment into my memory.

It made me think back to the first time Cheryl and I saw her. That morning of hustle and intensity, of prayer and pressure, then hearing Eden’s almost other-worldly cry as she entered the world (2:08pm). After the checks, our midwife quickly placed Eden onto Cheryl for skin-to-skin contact.

Then, she became unexpectedly still, calm, occasionally shuffling towards the face of her mother. Soft footsteps in the corridor broke the silence once or twice, as God gently etched the moment into my memory.

We were reminded by a dear friend last night that a child’s birthday isn’t just a celebration for the child (what would she even remember now?), but also a time of rejoicing for the parents to reflect on the joys and the sorrows in the year gone by, and on God’s faithfulness and mercy towards them.

Happy birthday my dear Eden. If blogs are still around when you’re old enough to read this, may this be a testimony to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, who has sustained and fathered you better than I ever could, every day of your life. Our prayer for you remains that you would be found clinging to Christ alone for everything on your last birthday.

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You’ll travel where my arms won’t reach
As the road will rise and lead your feet
On a journey of your own
May my mistakes to hinder you
But His grace remain and guide you through
This is my prayer for you…

“A Mother’s Prayer” by Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty, and Fionan de Barra; © 2012 Gettymusic and Fionan de Barra

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“My job is to bring light into darkness by raising my children in the Lord” – Jamie Peterson, homemaker, when asked about her job